


So Catch The Honest Tide

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Adventure, Brotherly Affection, Character Study, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Headcanons Aplenty, Oneshot, Pisces Albafica's POV, Sagiverse, Shapeshifting, Slice of Life, happy birthday pisces albafica!, i can wholly assure you that all info about the mediterranean sea is accurate to real life, no beta we die like gold saints, there is no fictional mediterranean where i make stuff up, there is only me armed with wikipedia and google
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:47:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29651538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Sagiverse; Albafica Birthday '21] Albafica and Regulus are on a mission. Things go a little awry, and a last-second plan lets them both live: and discover a method of freedom that both of them so badly need, for... pretty much the same reason, actually.
Relationships: Pisces Albafica & Leo Regulus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	So Catch The Honest Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, Albafica! Soundtrack for this one was the entirety of Liberation by Marcus Warner.
> 
> Please see end notes for a proper explanation on where the hell I've been, what the roadmap is from here on out, and what I'd really like all of you to do so you don't miss our fics if you like reading them. If you don't really care, feel free to ignore them, I won't be mad.
> 
> If you want to know what Sagiverse is, go [here](https://toyhou.se/~world/61401.sagiverse). If you want to understand Sagiverse!Albafica's entire storyline, go [here](https://toyhou.se/~forums/25920.the-lost-canvas/191784.charybdis-albafica). If you want to learn more about Sagiverse!Regulus, please wait for me to finish the Spectre culture article, as Regulus hasn't been uploaded yet.

"Ahh, but those _stupid_ Saints won't know what hit them. We have just about everything now, after all. All we need is that last piece of the Black Cloth. We already have everything else. Those two boys can snoop around all they'd like. We'll find it, and we'll kill them."

He'd heard enough. Gesturing to Regulus, who had that last piece of the Black Cloth somewhere on his person and probably stuffed in his boot, he jumped out from the spot they'd picked to watch the three men, diving down from atop the cliff towards them. The wind caught at his cape enough to slow his descent, and he landed squarely between them and the edge of the cliff. Regulus landed beside him, shorter and younger but already mirroring him, cape held tight in one arm drawn defensively up by his chest.

They made a spectacular duo, now that they'd had a chance to go on a mission together. But Albafica smiled at the three men, none of whom looked pleased to see him. It was barely a smile, and his eyes held far too large an intense, starlit flame for there to be any question as to whether it was a smile or the barest trace of a snarl.

"Afternoon," he greeted, casually enough. The leader of the group, still dressed in his suit and looking quite tense now, like he didn't expect them to actually be smart enough to track him down. Typical enough, though Albafica couldn't say that he'd be wrong to think that, knowing his coworkers as well as he did. "My apologies for interrupting your plotting to overthrow us, but I'm afraid we just can't let that slide."

Regulus cracked a smile out of the corner of his eye, cheery to the end. His pupils were narrow slits, both from the sunlight and how angry he actually was. He would stop being jovial when the world ended. "Did you really think we'd play cat and mouse with you the entire time? Seems to me that if we are, you should play the mouse at least once."

The leader's cosmos flared. Albafica's answered, tensing, burning brighter with every moment, steady blue-violet and spangled with stars. "The two of you have gotten in my way enough," he snapped, and the glow around him was getting darker with every moment, snapping into the form he recognized distantly as Fornax. Regulus still had their chestplate compacted and stuffed within the confines of the Leo Cloth, but what the man had was more than plenty to be worried about. "I think it's time to get rid of you for good. If you can stand in the fire, I'll bet you can't take the water as well. _Black Eruption!_ "

The flames weren't even red, black with a white core of something painful crackling towards them. Neither of them were capable of casting shields of raw cosmos the way Shion could. Regulus swore something filthy enough Albafica would never have repeated it where Sisyphus could hear, but fire wasn't something either of them were good at. Albafica spun on his heel, slung an arm around Regulus' chest, and dived off the cliff.

The portion of cliff they'd been standing on, though, was unfortunately a few thousand feet in the air. Halfway up a mountainside, actually.

Regulus screamed as they fell, spinning in the panicked fall of someone who didn't know how. Albafica took a deep breath, the wind cutting at his face, tangling knots into his hair as they fell faster towards the Mediterranean.

"We are most likely going to _die_ ," Regulus yelped, and Albafica inclined his head. "Why the hell would you throw us off the cliff?!"

They had thirty, maybe forty-five seconds before they hit the water. If they hit the water like this, they'd die on impact. But water could cushion a fall, if he let it catch them. Albafica pulled his left gauntlet off, forcing it between him and the sea. He reached out to Regulus with his free hand, unconcerned with any poison, knowing he was immune, and tugged him into his chest. The wind roared in his ears as they fell, and he tipped his head downward, the gauntlet between them and the sea.

Regulus clung to him, face all but buried in his chestplate. "Tuck your chin in," Albafica murmured, and his voice would be lost to the wind but not to Regulus, who heard him and did as he was told. Albafica tucked his own chin in, only raising his head enough to see the water below them. He flared his cosmos, reaching for just one blossom, just one bloom that would save them. The Piranha Rose appeared in his right hand, tucked between his middle and ring fingers. The stars against the blue-violet fog didn't dim.

No, the closer they got to the sea, the more they glittered deeper teal, losing all of their red in the interests of sea-green, green as kelp, green as a prophecy. He'd made this happen once before, in the bath of the Pisces Temple, incapable of replicating it ever since. But when he'd managed it, his cosmos had been the dark green of the forests beyond Sanctuary.

Regulus' cosmos was blinding in his free hand, but he reached up to help hold onto the gauntlet he'd thrust out between them. His cosmos blazed a teal so bright it could have rivalled Ilias'.

"Trust me, and don't let go," Albafica whispered. The sky was losing its grip on them, and the sea awaited. " _Piranha Rose!_ " 

It exploded in his hand and the sea receded around them, cradled still within the sky and the water walling the two Saints in. And then the waters advanced again, enveloping them both in a gentle, thunderous clap, and Albafica blacked out.

His eyes opened with a snap and he drew in a breath, a gentle chill sliding through his ribs and the sides of his throat and the scent of something salty through his nose. Regulus was still tight within his grasp, as was his entirely-undamaged gauntlet, still blacked out but with delicate orange-and-white spines running down his back and peeking out by the sideburns of his hair.

Albafica scanned his form. Regulus' legs were gone, his boots seemingly almost fused into one, plated openings just wide enough to allow room for spines running down his… tail. His caudal fin was striped, spines melted together with a thin, translucent membrane and streaked with a deep bronze, the same colour as his hair. Beside him, blending into the water below, was a larger tail that looked very much like what was attached to Regulus' hips, cerulean striped with deep indigo and his own spines glittering with what he knew to be a poison so lethal that he couldn't eat in the communal mess hall of Sanctuary without worrying for someone collapsing.

His own boots had melted together in the exact same way as Regulus', guarding his flukes without getting in the way of movement. He sucked in another breath, noting the cool water slipping in through the sides of his throat and his ribs.

 _Gills_ , he noted dimly. He could feel his tail, now that he was looking at it, and experimentally twitched where his mind was still mapping his ankles, as if tied up, still should be. His caudal fin flicked, launching him and Regulus forward a good ten feet. He tightened his grip on his partner, blinking.

"Well," he muttered, slipping his gauntlet back on, unconsciously flattening the spines on his forearm until they slipped through the slot meant for them, guarded by the fins of the Pisces Cloth. "Fuck. Uhm. I guess that worked." He had a bad habit of talking to himself - really, all Pisces Saints he'd ever read about had done that - but he hadn't read about any of them being capable of turning into fish. He'd been mostly convinced until right now that the first and only other time he'd managed this had been a fever dream.

Fever dreams didn't turn his partners into fish, too. Regulus shifted in his arms, blinking, looking up at him. "We're… alive?" he murmured back. A few small bubbles escaped his mouth as he spoke, and his words, despite seeming a little wobbly, were perfectly understandable.

"We are most certainly alive," Albafica confirmed, and loosened his grip on him. "Try not to freak out, though. I'm… mostly certain we can go back to how we were."

"Uhm." Regulus pulled away, a confused expression on his face, before he seemed to jump, floating in the water. They were slowly descending still, and there was a long way to go until they were actually at the bottom, but they were still more than within the warm surface waters of the Mediterranean. He'd studied the geography of the seas near Sanctuary quite a bit in the boredom that came from not being able to train due to injuries, and they weren't so far from the surface that the water around them would start inching towards freezing. Regulus scanned his own form, and then Albafica's, looking back up with the same expression on his face. "So your plan to avoid being set on fire was to throw us into the sea, which you intended on us surviving by… turning us into fish?"

"I didn't expect you to be _able_ to turn into a fish," he admitted. "I could get us into the water, that was never an issue. It was a matter of hitting the water in a way the minimized the impact. Easy to do if the sea catches you and pulls you in, and you're not trying to javelin your way into it. I expected to just swim back to land after that, not…" He gestured to his tail. "Last time this happened, I figured I was having a fever dream and just went back to bed. Don't ask how we managed it, I don't know and I don't feel like theorizing. We're not drowning, we're not dead, we still have Fornax with us, and I'm fairly certain our biggest problem is going to be how we intend on not being fish when we're back onshore."

Regulus nodded, and then cracked another grin, displaying an impressive amount of razor-sharp shark's teeth. Albafica blinked. "Well, speak for yourself. When I went to Ireland and came back way hairier than I was when I left Greece, I ate nothing but whatever I could hunt for weeks. If I'm going to turn into a fish, I'm getting lunch." He moved as if to lean to the side, his tail rising to balance and somehow turning the motion into an unsteady cartwheel. Albafica hesitantly smiled back, chuckling.

"All right," he said, raising his hands in surrender. "You have me convinced. We'll swim to shore and hunt along the way. If all goes well with the mission, and we figure out how to go from men to fishmen and back again, we'll swim all the way back to Sanctuary and figure it all out as we go."

Regulus' smile was bright, and he turned another cartwheel, intentionally this time. "Great! Let's go!" He swept his arms in a breaststroke with a sweep of his tail, and launched forward. Albafica grinned.

"Shore's not that way!" he called, but followed him down the current anyway. Moving his tail was a vastly different experience than attempting to swim with legs. For one, he definitely didn't have knees, and his tail was capable of bending in ways that legs were not designed to bend. He reminded himself that it was, in fact, a tail, and not simply his legs bound to each other, and he swam a little faster, arms at his sides, avoiding the plates in his chestplate that opened and closed with his gills as he breathed. 

He caught up with Regulus not far from a school of actual lionfish, who were more white and brown over Regulus' faint blue and deep bronze. Regulus had his arms folded and was flicking his tail, cosmos faintly puzzled and bright teal.

"What?" Albafica asked as he swam up beside him, pulling himself slightly more upright. Not that upright really had a meaning down here in the deep. He could have been perfectly upside down and not noticed anything to be different. 

"They look like us, and I think they're us if we were full fish and not half fish," Regulus said. "Is it cannibalism if we eat them?"

Albafica blinked. Out of all the questions he'd been expecting, that wasn't one of them. The school of lionfish seemed to be just swimming around a large patch of kelp, snacking on smaller fish hiding within the seagrass. "I don't… think so?" he answered slowly. "I mean, they're lionfish, and we're lionfish… mermaids… mermen… lionme- We're not completely fish," he finished firmly. "We are not lionfish, in the same way the pet monkey Kardia's lady-love got him in Tenochtitlan is not a person and thus does not get to eat in the mess hall. And even if it _was_ cannibalism, we are not telling anyone we turned into fish so I highly doubt anyone is going to say we did anything wrong."

Regulus grinned at him, beginning to rub his hands together before pointing at the school of lionfish. " _Lightning Bolt_!"

Albafica had never seen lightning travel underwater, but it shot forward through the water, rebounding across several fish before driving itself into the seagrassy hill that the fish had been swimming around. Several charred fish rose from the hill, floating motionlessly against the current. Albafica shrugged and swam towards them, reaching to gather them up.

He was able to reach five of them before the current carried two more away, and he handed three of the charred fish to Regulus, who seemed quite pleased with himself. Albafica sighed, amused, and began to tug apart the charred skin of the fish to get into the well-cooked meat of it.

They ate quickly, finding to their delight that lionfish were a tasty lunch. A small pod of sharks swam up to them, clearly interested in the blood, one brave shark sliding its face up onto his shoulder, attempting to reach the lionfish he was eating.

"Regulus," he said, catching the attention of his partner, who had discovered that if he stayed still enough, the fish would come to him, and then he could electrocute them at close range. Regulus looked up and grinned at the shark resting its chin on Albafica's shoulder, watching as he plucked a few spines from the remains of the skin and carefully held them over his shoulder, letting go and pulling his hand back quickly enough to not get bit. After all, it would be impossible to tell if the shark considered them fish, and thus food, as well as the lionfish it was trying to share.

"That's really cool," he agreed, snatching another lionfish out of the water and tossing it towards him. Albafica pulled it apart, tossing most of its head over his shoulder before working a filet off the bone to eat. Regulus grinned at another shark, inching closer in hopes of getting him to share. He electrocuted another lionfish, tossing the entirety of it towards the shark. "We should probably get going, I'm done eating if you are, and aren't we at least supposed to be in a hurry?"

Albafica shrugged. "We are, but the longer we wait, the more he'll believe we're dead, and the farther he'll get in working out in the open. It'll draw him out because he'll be of the opinion that Sanctuary's not a problem anymore. If we can get him out in the open, he won't be in territory he controls completely, and that gives us an advantage. I'd rather fight a man in the middle of a just-evacuated town square over his mansion full of traps and guards."

Regulus nodded, rising from where he'd been floating and swimming over to him. The shark that Albafica had been feeding recoiled, swimming away now that it was outmatched two to one. Albafica returned the smile, offering his hands. "Let's go."

Regulus grinned, flicking the spines that were the equivalent of one ear, and took them.

They pulled themselves onto shore by way of a small dock. To Albafica's surprise, as he pulled himself up onto the soggy wood, his fins and tail vanished, leaving him with a pair of legs and boots and no gills to speak of. He leaned back down to help Regulus pull himself out, nodding in satisfaction as he left his bronze-striped spines in the waves below.

"That was fun," Regulus chirped, and Albafica smiled. He wasn't one to smile, but he'd smile for Regulus. He put an arm around his shoulders for a moment, taking comfort in just being together, trusting that their legs had returned to them on land and that their fins were waiting for them within the tides.

"It was," he agreed. "Ready to go throw a man in jail for enslaving a city and burning several forests to the ground?"

"One second," Regulus said, rising. "We should probably dry off before we catch a chill."

Albafica rose with him. "No, we need to go in as we are," he said, firmly. Regulus raised an eyebrow, and he held up a hand to stop the question before he spoke it. "If we go in dry, he's going to assume we teleported, and he's just going to do it again. If we go in soaking wet, he's going to know we hit the water and survived. It'll throw him a lot better than an ability neither of us actually has. So we go in soaking wet and mildly annoyed and we wreck him. Here."

He flicked his cosmos, a pale silver rose appearing in his hand, and he tucked it above his ear. Regulus closed one eye and smiled, leaning into his touch ever so slightly. He knew what the price of solitude was, enough that Albafica wasn't expecting him to step forward and give him a tight hug, but returned it all the same. Regulus only came up to his collar, but they had been close for years, and he squeezed back for just a moment before pulling away again.

Regulus grabbed his hand, turning towards the path on the other side of the beach and starting to run. Albafica followed.

Albafica pushed the front doors open to the prospective Fornax Saint's manor. It had been a twenty-minute trek out from the shoreline back to the manor, and it didn't help how being wet automatically made them both uncomfortable. Still, they were soaked through, and their opponent froze in his suit and most of a Cloth as he saw them walk in.

"You tossed us into the sea," Albafica remarked. "That wasn't very polite of you. Saints _are_ meant to be polite, even to opposition. You need better training."

"You-" Their enemy glowered in his direction. "You died! Nobody could have survived that fall. You had to have died!"

Regulus, beside him, barked out half a laugh that was more a noise of contempt than anything else. His teeth were bared, and he hadn't bothered to force his teeth back into a human form. "But we didn't!" His hands crackled with captive lightning, a sure sign of the conflict to come.

"You… Fine! I'll finish you off myself, Gold Saints!" he snarled. Albafica smiled. Regulus darted away, leaping into the air to land behind their opponent. He whipped around, turning to face the Leo Saint. Now without most of his opponent's focus, Albafica raised his cosmos high, bright blue-violet and sparkling with an inner fire, and let it burn.

He swept a hand across the carpet. " _Royal Demon Rose_!" Their scent would prove deadly to all but Regulus and himself. If he could trap them inside the entrance hall, then it was only a matter of endurance, and they had him outnumbered. He darted to his left, Regulus following to circle, keeping their opponent's attention on him, keeping him from turning around. All he needed to do was seal the circle.

" _Lightning Bolt_!" Regulus called. Albafica jumped to his left, avoiding the majority of the technique even as some of the lightning caught his Royal Demon roses and set them aflame. That was fine. Poison could always be airborne, if he felt sadistic enough, and he certainly wasn't feeling friendly. His cosmos burned in his veils, all around him, the heavy scent of seabrine and roses cloying in the air. Regulus' was sharper, skyborne and seaborne at once.

" _Black Volcano_!" Albafica dove forward, catching the opportunity with half a smile and a rose in hand. Regulus dove a moment later, lightning in his eyes and pupils no wider than slits. Their opponent stepped back reflexively, unaware of how to dodge properly. Albafica stepped forward and drove the Fire Rose into his back.

" _Fire Rose_ ," he said, in a normal speaking volume. The rose caught fire, bursting into flames like so much an inferno. It tore a hole into his flesh, and he screamed. Albafica stepped back, hands on his hips as he watched the rose's inner fire tear into his flesh and burn him alive from the inside out with a toxic, deep orange flame.

The charred remains of him dropped to the ground a moment later. The Fornax Cloth rose as he burst into starlight, shifting back into the proper form of the Furnace. Regulus leaned over onto one foot, lifting his other leg closer, and smacked the side of his shin. A compartment opened up in his boot, and he pulled the chestplate of the Cloth out of it, holding it out to the rest of its body.

Fornax burst into a deep red flame, until it was complete, and then quite suddenly resting in its Pandora Box. Albafica nodded in satisfaction, allowing his cosmos to burn out back into something resembling normalcy.

"That's that, then," he muttered. He looked up at Regulus, who, apart from a few smudges of soot, looked entirely fine. "Shall we head back home, then?"

"I don't know if Fornax will like being in the sea for a few days," Regulus pointed out. "Do you think I can get the entire Cloth inside my boot?"

Albafica rolled his eyes. "Perhaps, but you might want to explain to them why you're doing that in hopes they actually agree. And I don't know about you, but I want actual food before we swim halfway across the Mediterranean."

Regulus dove off the dock and into the sea without a slightest hint of doubt or hesitation. Albafica reached behind his neck to tie his hair into a quick bun, secured with a rosevine, and dove in after him. The water was warm and pleasant against the skin, and he felt his cosmos shimmer green as his legs briefly felt entirely malleable, and then he could feel the lionfish spines running down his back and his flukes elongate into the water. He flicked his caudal fin and swam after Regulus, watching him turn a somersault mid-current and laugh.

If he was right on how fast they could travel in the water, it would take them about a day and a half to swim back to Sanctuary, and that was assuming they stopped at least twice to check something interesting out. They'd be home by nightfall the next day, if all went well. He caught up with Regulus quickly, reaching for his hand as they swam. Regulus squeezed his hand in return. Albafica glanced at their clasped hands, noting that both of them had a fin-like membrane between their fingers stretching all the way to the first knuckle, just like the lionfish spines running down their dorsals. He nodded to himself, and kept swimming.

They swam for an hour before Regulus slowed, pausing to start laughing at something. "What?" Albafica asked, and Regulus only pointed. Sure enough, there was a thin stream of bubbles not too far away from them. His mind automatically registered it as a place where two conflicting currents ran past each other. What was funny wasn't the bubbles, but the several sardines caught in the stream, spinning helplessly onto their backs and then back onto their stomachs, unable to swim out of the current.

He let out a hiss through his gills that seemed the equivalent of a faint chuckle. "Okay, that is funny," he agreed. "Have you ever eaten sardine?"

"Time to try it," Regulus answered, diving forward towards the stream of bubbles. Sure enough, the sardines couldn't swim away, and it was easy as plucking apples to gather them up. While he'd never really been one for raw fish before, regardless of what Dohko offered him when he said his suitor had made food for him, in the depths of the Mediterranean raw sardine tasted quite nice indeed. It wasn't too salty, and it was flavourful with seagrass and smaller fish.

They kept swimming. The more practice he had, the easier it seemed to be getting, until he didn't need to concentrate on waving his tail or using his gills, until it was almost as easy as walking along. He allowed his mind to drift, watching the sea around them, feeling for the slight changes in pressure and current until he could say for sure how deep into the water they were, and roughly their location. He'd studied the Mediterranean Sea, but he hadn't studied the exact water currents or the winds above it. The trade winds of the summer blew ships out to the New World across the Atlantic, and that was about all he knew.

Except, of course, for the old poems about the sea in the Age of Myth, where it had been believed to be the tears shed of a great god of death, long since gone from the world. That god had wept the Sea of Monsters into existence, and to counter the sorrow, had wept the Mediterranean as well. Not enough to make the waters actively magical. But enough that the sea breathed. He didn't stop swimming, but he paused all the same.

"Hey, Regulus."

"Yeah?" Regulus inclined his head back to look at him, still leading solely out of adolescent energy, one ear-fin relaxed and the other alert. His ear-fins matched his eyebrows, Albafica noted.

"You know that old legend about the Mediterranean breathing?" he asked. Regulus rolled over onto his back, still swimming forward, but it looked like he was swimming backwards now.

"Yeah, what about it? I never thought they meant the sea was actually alive, and I can see more stuff since Ireland, and it's got living fish and stuff in it, but it's not alive. Not like Ireland was or our temples are."

Albafica nodded. "But they said it breathed because it takes in surface water from the Atlantic, and sends it back by way of the deeper waters. We've been swimming against the current for over an hour. It's not that fast a current that we've been having any difficulties, but I wonder how deep we can go."

Regulus blinked, tilting his head to the side, ear-fins out and flared but not up. He made a face of consideration as he thought it over, and it was one of the strangest faces he'd ever made, but he nodded after a moment. "You're saying we should dive deeper to where it's all cold and stuff and see if we can swim with the current?"

Albafica nodded. "Right now, I may as well be swimming in the bath in my temple for how warm it is. I don't think it's frozen at the bottom, there's no way water this warm drops in temperature so much, but I admit I want to see how far I can take the pressure before I start having a bad time."

Regulus grinned. "Race you to the bottom," he said, and launched himself downwards. Albafica grinned and followed him.

The waters steadily chilled as he swam downwards, spurred on largely by the sweep of his tail and the flattening of his spines against his body. The strangest thing was that despite swimming well down into the dark, they'd been swimming on the edge of good sunlight, at his guess about a hundred-fifty metres down; and by now they were inching on four hundred and still going. He could still see Regulus ahead of him, though, and that was the odd part: he could have followed him blindfolded normally, tracking him by the deep-sea green of his cosmos. Now, though…

He could smell through his gills not unlike he would through his nose, and after so many nights allowing Regulus to sleep on his chest to ward off nightmares, he might well have had a fishhook in his gills when it came to tracking him by scent. Even in the water, it travelled, and he didn't think his scent of smell was nearly this good above the waves.

Regulus stopped going deeper when it was clear he could barely see where he was going. He turned to face Albafica, waiting where he was, drifting only slightly by the current tugging at him, until he caught up.

"Your face is glowing in stripes like your fins," he pointed out, the moment he thought Albafica was close enough. Albafica blinked, pulling his tail forward so he could see his stripes, feeling his balance give way beneath him and turning the motion into an unintended backflip.

"Ack-" He reached forward and caught the edges of his caudal fin, bent forward into what he guessed would be an almost perfect circle to keep from spinning in a direction he didn't want to spin in. The pressure was significant but not immense, but Regulus was right: while he had the markings of a lionfish, his scales were cerulean and streaked with indigo, and beside those nearly-invisible indigo stripes, streaks of a light blue only a little more intense than his hair glowed brightly in the dark. Near the surface, he hadn't noticed the extra stripes at all.

He glanced at Regulus, who glowed in quite the same way, in a golden hue that he would've related to dandelions or daffodils. The stripes across his cheeks, forehead, and the bridge of his nose matched those running down his body. Albafica backed up a little, until he could see all of him without inclining his head, blinking.

Regulus' arms, shoulders, and neck, which were largely visible, were striped just the same way. He was pale enough that while the bronze didn't stand out, the glowing stripes and the paleness of his skin did stand out enough to be visible. Even his hair only seemed visible in patches, which when he squinted, caused him to crack up in laugher. He reached behind himself and untied the bun he'd tucked his hair into, chuckling.

"So is my hair also striped and glowing, or are you special that way?" he asked. Regulus grinned.

"I wasn't going to point that out until you noticed, but I'll admit, it kind of makes me want to grow my hair out." He shrugged, leaning forward into a largely stationary loop. "If only I knew how to keep the fish parts I want. I'd have striped hair that glows all the time."

Albafica shook his head, smiling in spite of himself. "Okay, glowing hair _is_ pretty cool," he agreed. "I think I'll have to do some research on fish when we get back, because I don't know about you, but I'd figure being invisible would be an advantage in the deep sea, not glowing so everything can see you."

Regulus swam a circle around him, catching his hands and tugging him forward again. The current had since shifted in the opposite direction as they'd dove deeper, and they were moving a lot faster than they had been. At this rate, if they swam through the night, they might make it back by noon the next day, halving the time it would take over land. It would require quite an explanation, or they could just spend most of the afternoon in Athens pretending to be foreign nobility travelling through the area, relaxing a little before they returned still a full day early from the mission.

They were coming up on the Holy War, after all, and Albafica had already had a run in with a Judge of Hell in the hills of France where he tried not to think about it too hard. A little play was reasonable enough, and he enjoyed Regulus' company more than just about any other of his coworkers. Regulus didn't see him as someone only interesting to kiss and otherwise boring, and that alone was enough to earn him some trust. Their closeness over their mutual bond with Regulus' father had come first, and it had given way to honest friendship as Regulus had grown up and become more than just the eight-year-old Albafica volunteered to babysit just so he didn't have to be alone with the undercurrent of his own mind.

At the end of things, he was one of the few Saints who recognized that Regulus was fourteen, not four, and that he couldn't be given the responsibilities of a Gold Saint and the privileges of an apprentice. He'd seen the quiet rage in his eyes when his suggestions were ignored and his requests for missions declined simply because he didn't have enough experience, everyone also ignoring that he couldn't get any experience if he was never allowed to do his job. Albafica had always offered to make him dinner when it happened, and Regulus would spend the meal complaining, and Albafica would make him feel better by teaching him a new expletive he'd learned from throwing rocks against Manigoldo's roof in the middle of the night solely to startle him awake.

The waters were deep, cold, and dark, but he let Regulus lead as they swam with the current, faster than most horses could have galloped for more than ten minutes straight. Regulus liked leading, and Albafica didn't mind following as backup, trusting Regulus to be able to handle most threats, and trusting in himself to be more than strong enough when the situation grew dire enough to necessitate backup. 

Regulus rose from the deep again a few hours later, cosmos tiring but still a bright sea green. Albafica followed, rising slowly into the loosening pressure, feeling his fins flare out and his lungs expand with the higher oxygen content of the water. It wasn't long, maybe half an hour, before he felt the warmth of the surface waters begin to return and a flaming, bright red light strike deep into the tide. Regulus swam all the way up through the current, breaking up to the surface in a graceful leap before landing back in the water. Albafica followed, jumping out of the waves and tilting his torso forward again, diving back into the tide. He couldn't help but smile, treading the warmth of the water with his gills below and his head above water.

"Why did we surface?" he asked. He hadn't said much as they swam, choosing instead to focus on their surroundings and how it had felt to be half-fish for what he guessed to be five or six hours, now that the sun was setting on the horizon and blanketing the sea into a deep scarlet. Now this was his kind of sea: not the chilly, pressured deeps but the warmth of the summer sea, blanketed in the red of sunset. 

"Because I wanted to see the sunset," Regulus answered. He paused. "And also because I've been following the current and I have no idea where we are."

Albafica's eyes lit up. This was something he knew, and knew well, and was surprised Regulus had never been taught. It made sense, in its way: a lot of people, Sisyphus included, seemed well-inclined to forget that Regulus had been five when Ilias had been killed, and had not in fact already learned how to survive in the wild with a chronic illness entirely alone and without help. He didn't talk about Ilias' death - it was too painful, and he knew more than Pope Sage wanted him to, and he knew that like he knew who had honestly killed him - but Regulus' knowledge was impressive for his age. It was still missing a few crucial pieces, though, and finding them was the first step to helping him fix them.

"Well, I can help you find that out, but let's get dinner first," he said. "I don't know about you, but I'm hungry."

"You don't know where we are, either." Regulus swatted him with his caudal fin, only pushing him slightly backwards.

"Guilty as charged." Albafica shrugged, nonchalant. No matter which way he looked, there was nothing on the horizon but open sea. "But once the sun is properly down, we can find out. You might know the stars, but navigating by them is a lot trickier. Fortunately for us, I know how."

"We'll have to sleep at some point, so maybe we should just navigate towards land?" Regulus pointed out. "I don't mind sleeping outside, but I do mind spying, fighting, being thrown off a cliff, swimming, fighting some more, and then swimming for upwards of a full day without any rest."

Albafica paused. Right. Sleep. They did actually need that. Being in the water had energized him, now that he was thinking about it. But he was tiring: there was no way he was going to manage diving back into the deep waters and swimming for another six hours, rising, and then finding land. "I'm not sure we need to find land," he said, slowly. "I'm pretty sure fish sleep. Ninety-percent certain that fish sleep. Everything has to sleep eventually. If we can find a sheltered spot underwater, we can probably sleep there. But it would be good to be up before dawn, so we know what direction we need to be heading in when we're awake. Sleep sooner, rather than later."

He looked back up at him. "Okay. New plan. Let's get food, look for a place to sleep, see if sleeping underwater is an option, and we'll get started tomorrow about an hour or two before dawn. If we keep at our current pace, even if we sleep we'll be back midafternoon tomorrow. Might as well spend some time in Athens, I don't want to answer questions on how we're back so early."

Regulus smiled, swimming over to wrap his arms around Albafica's neck. He smiled in return, pressing his face into the soaked, striped bronze hair still faintly glowing. It seemed to be by the ambient light around them, not the depth they were swimming at. "Sounds good," Regulus answered, taking the moment just to be held and rest. It was nice to have one person around that he was capable of holding without worry of whether they would survive it.

A faint memory twitched in the back of his head, holding a newborn, bronze-haired child, partially flecked with scales the same colour as his hair. A recurring dream that hadn't left him alone since Ilias had left him. What it meant, he didn't know. But he held on until Regulus let go, diving back into the sea.

"Come on, it's food time," he called. Albafica dove down to follow him, allowing his tail to break the water as he did.

"Yes, yes, I'm aware, you're a black hole with legs when it comes to food," he teased, catching Regulus' noise of indignation in reply.

Albafica groaned softly, eyes shut in exhaustion, sleeping on his back and one hand carelessly tossed over his eyes. He hadn't slept well in a few days, and it was just past second sleep now, and when he slept all he could dream about was a raging river full of screaming and will o' the wisps, distant blue flames in the waters, chasing them, incapable of catching up, never able to breathe the sea, breaking the tide to gasp out a breath and seeing the waters bathed in frosting, chilly red.

Something poked him in the chest. He sat bolt upright, eyes open and cosmos already burning, a rose already in his hand. What kind, he didn't notice or care. His eyes adjusted to the moonlight coming through the window and the familiar cosmos now sitting on his lap.

Regulus looked at, clad in nothing at all but a nightshirt, everything from his hips down covered in scales and spines, pale gold striped with bronze and the faintest glowing, golden light.

He stared blearily at him, glancing at the angle of the moonlight. "Regulus, it is _two in the morning_ ," he hissed. "What in sweet Athena's name is _wrong with you?!_ "

Regulus offered him a lopsided smile, tilting his head with one ear-fin flared, and pointed at the window. "Moon's full and red out there," he said. "Making the cape look like it's bathed in blood. You've been sleeping terribly, and I've spent every free moment I've got making a cove under the cliffs where I can actually put up a good hammock when I don't want to be bothered. Want to go for a swim?"

He blinked, discarding the rose, raising a hand to rub at his eyes. He nodded. "Yeah, sure. Let's go sleep somewhere that doesn't scream in my dreams."

Regulus pounced on him, throwing his arms around his neck. Albafica caught him just above his flukes, pressing his face into the soft, striped bronze hair. He smiled something gentle, a secret smile he saved only for his best friend and swimming partner, and let himself relax.

So long as there was water he could dive into and someone to share that water with, he'd be all right. He'd always find his wayward way back home.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, y'all deserve a proper explanation and AO3 doesn't let me have a journal function, and I know that some of you who read my fics don't follow me elsewhere nor let me know who you are. You still deserve an explanation, so here we are.
> 
> Basically, I was writing great and all was good and then COVID hit, and my productivity went completely south because apparently writing is only easy at the university library. Bah. I also figured out that my major problem with Aeternum was that it needed to be a webcomic and it's not, so fuck me I guess. IKM needs a lot more plotting to get right, so that's shelved probably until after I'm vaccinated. Because Canada, trust that it'll be started up again probably this fall. Both of these fic series will be turned into a single fic each, with every current 'oneshot' set as a proper chapter. I didn't expect either one to need continuations, but they do, so I'll be fixing that. This does mean that those of you who bookmarked / subscribed / etc will be losing those: never fear, I have a solution.
> 
> That solution is my pseuds, which I recently reorganized. So here's how it'll work: Aeternum and IKM as they are now will be archived onto a pseud probably called LocketOldru or something like that. There will be a link on my profile to that, as well as links to the new fics where all of the chapters will be hosted on the actual oneshots. So your bookmarks will stay and provide a link to the new place where they are. Aeternum will, in all likelihood, be rewritten. I will not take down the old versions if you decide you like those better, but I will be fixing some minor issues. Fortunately, all of the plot fixes haven't actually appeared yet, so no canon info so far will be changing. :p As for IKM, it just needs to be continued.
> 
> My other pseuds have been reorganized. LocketShoru will remain home to all fics that are not Sagiverse, and princetemerarem will remain home to all requests, which I do still take if you have a pitch you really want me to hear about. However, Sagiverse, the main AU I'm writing with my fiance that will be the majority of my writing from here on out, will take place on my pseud AstraDaemonia. I will share this pseud with my fiance, who y'all probably knew as KageSagittarius, the author of Thea and Shattered Heart. (Both have now been taken down, and never fear, all the characters you love from them have been revamped and exist in Sagiverse as well.) That's where all Sagiverse will be, and it will also be crossposted to Toyhou.se, so you can follow on either platform. I would recommend TH if you have one, because we can't exactly import the wiki to AO3. :p 
> 
> So, uh, yeah! I have a few fics that are done and just need touchups to be posted to AO3, so I'm not dead! Just slow and working largely on TH. I hope you like everything so far, and know that we're certainly not done yet, and I really hope everyone's interested in Sagiverse too, because this is where things just get _weird_ , and we love that.


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